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New York Has 7 Billion Reasons to Worry About a Census Question

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Joseph Salvo, the chief demographer for New York City’s Department of Planning, worries that a question about citizenship on the 2020 census could lead to an inaccurate count in the city.CreditCreditGaia Squarci for The New York Times

Repairs on the Staten Island Expressway. Vegetables for nutritional programs in the Bronx. Programs for seniors in Manhattan and Queens. New schools in Brooklyn. The $7 billion from the federal government that funds all these aspects of New York life could be affected by one question on the 2020 census: Are you a United States citizen?

That question is provoking fear among the city’s elected officials, who worry that because of its inclusion on the census questionnaire, some immigrants may decline to participate.

Census information is not supposed to be shared with other parts of the government, but the Trump administration has said that all undocumented immigrants are subject to deportation, leading many to say they do not trust what the government will do with their information.

Immigrants or children of immigrants make up nearly 60 percent of the city’s population, and the ripple effect could be powerful. Officials are concerned that could lead to an inaccurate population count in New York.

“People have identified this as an immigrant problem, and that’s really not accurate,” said Joseph J. Salvo, the chief demographer for the Department of City Planning.

The city’s education department comes to him for the data it uses to redraw school zones, he said, as does the health department when it needs to understand illness rates. Businesses use federal information to determine whether to open in underserved neighborhoods.

There are now 3.2 million foreign-born people in New York City, out of 8.6 million residents. Of those foreign-born, 46 percent are noncitizens, Mr. Salvo said. Mr. Salvo estimates that 500,000 are undocumented.

“Those immigrants are side by side with children who are citizens, with an uncle who is a legal permanent resident, with the cousin who is undocumented. All of those people are afraid,” Mr. Salvo said.

On Wednesday, the New York Immigration Coalition, an activist group, announced its New York Counts 2020 campaign alongside congressional and local elected officials. The effort has three prongs: to fight the question; to pressure the United States Census Bureau to protect the information of all New Yorkers; and to reassure residents that they can safely respond.

At the news conference, Nydia Velázquez, a Democrat representing Queens, Brooklyn and Lower Manhattan, said she is co-sponsoring legislation in the House of Representatives that will require the Commerce Department to provide advance notice to Congress before changing questions on the census. Representative Grace Meng, a Democrat from Queens who sits on the committee that funds the census bureau, said she and her colleagues are considering withholding funds for 2019 unless the question is removed.

In a public hearing last week before the question was added, Ms. Meng confronted the Secretary of Commerce, Wilbur Ross, whose department oversees the U.S. Census Bureau. “I told him directly that this is about accuracy; this is mandated by the Constitution to count every living person.”

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said that he would join the multistate lawsuit brought by the state’s attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, against the Trump administration, to try to block the question from being included.

In the last census count, in 2010, the city’s response rate was 62 percent, but some heavily immigrant communities, like Washington Heights and the South Bronx, exceeded that, with more than 70 percent of residents answering the census questionnaires.

Adriano Espaillat, a Democrat who in 2010 was representing Washington Heights and Harlem in the State Assembly, said that was in part because of a robust effort by volunteers to convince residents their participation counted. Mr. Espaillat, who is now in Congress, said he could not yet encourage undocumented residents to take part.

“I want to fight this question back, first,” he said. “If not in Congress, then in the courts. If at the end of this the question remains, then we’re going to have to come together to decide the messaging.”

New York Democrats in Congress worry that an undercount could cause the state to lose seats. After the 2010 census, which the city challenged because it claimed that 50,000 residents were not counted, New York forfeited two seats, in part because of a loss of population upstate. That trend could hold for 2020.

Andrew Reamer, a professor at George Washington University’s Institute of Public Policy, who recently published a study on the 2020 census, said that the census reaches the most fundamental areas of life in the United States: government representation, democracy and the economy.

“The census data is like the electrical system,” Professor Reamer said. “It reaches everywhere in ways that are not readily seen.”

For New York, inaccurate numbers could have effects as small as a serving at lunch. “The Asian-American community is the fastest growing senior population in the city,” said Howard Shih, the director of research and policy for the Asian-American Federation in New York. Census figures, he said, could determine something as mundane, but essential, as how much food a senior center would need to order to accommodate this population.

The data compiled once a decade serves as the basis of comparison for smaller, sample surveys compiled annually.

“Anything that affects the propensity of people to answer the census is of concern to us,” said Mr. Salvo, the demographer. “The Census Bureau’s first priority should always be maximum response. Anything they do to compromise that, frankly, works against their main mission.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A20 of the New York edition with the headline: New York Has 7 Billion Reasons To Worry About a Census Question. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe